You know, this Rich Hammond moron has me thinking … and I’ve figured out now exactly what it is about the internet that I think I hate so much.

It’s a fake environment, pretending to be real.

Hammond, who clearly is now simply a PR honk for the Kings, still claims to be the “insider”. He still claims to be a reporter. He still claims to be independent. His “blog” still claims autonomy, and he considers it risky and cutting edge to have a comment page for fans to write in (which is, of course, heavily moderated). The truth, of course, is that Hammond is not allowed to say anything bad about the Kings, he doesn’t say anything bad about the Kings. He’s not allowed to let anyone on his blog page ask about Luc Robitaille’s house or Heidi Androl’s drinking or Mark Hardy’s sexual escapades. He’s not allowed to question anything financial. Anything of any real controversy on the ice or off … gets deleted or never posted. He gets glad handed by Luc and even Dean and Nick Nickson, and, well, he laps it up like a puppy! He thinks (and tells everyone) that this is because these guys are just swell guys who really like him and have taken him under their wing. That’s why he, a stupid former beat reporter, is on the air in between periods being asked actual hockey questions – he thinks it’s because they value his input, but in fact it’s because HE SELLS TICKETS. He’s the PR guy, directed to work on King social media alongside, apparently, the alleged drug using alleged house burner allegedly named rinkrat. They give him credibility, help create this ridiculous image that he’s a REPORTER … LOL … and ….. look, did any of these guys talk to him when he was with the actual Newspaper? NO! Because he was a goofy looking nerdy dipshit in a dying industry asking softball questions like a child at Disneyland.

Think of this. He bills himself as a reporter, there to ask the hard questions without interference from the team. Yet , yet he bills himself as the “Insider”. How can you be a hard hitting reporter and be on the “inside” at the same time? It’s like being an egg, and a rock. I am smart, but dumb. They are opposite things, Rich.

Well, look. The reality is simple. He’s a guy they hired for probably 50k a year, twice what he made at the SGV Trbibune before, and have him be in charge of some new social media deal, the same way Adam Brady is for the Ducks or The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders are for the Cowboys. Fine, whatever. The issue I have is this. The Kings have just created this version of reality that isn’t real. The “insider” is inside the way that the old guy with the glasses that does the Magic Mountain / Six Flags ads is on the “inside”. The people in the “community” of posters are not a real community. They are fake. They can’t say what they want, they can’t say it to who they want and if their maniacal rantings were exposed to the real world they’d be back in the real world – fat, slovenly, unemployed and loved only by their fat, slovenly mothers.

The same is true of most on-line environments, and it’s exactly what bothers me. The internet is NOT reality. And I don’t mean in a “Call of Duty” game-playing way, I mean in real life. Social media isn’t real. You don’t talk in 140 character utterances. You don’t get saved by a moderator if someone is mean to you. I have one person on Facebook that says the most ridiculous patriotic, religious shit EVERY day. Every day. Everything is related to our Lord and the shining beacon of wondefullness that is our country. Well you know what? First of all that person couldn’t say that shit in public or she’d be committed to an asylum. I mean it’s real out-there stuff and anyone normal freaks out 5 minutes into a conversation with her. But more important and to the point, she is the meanest, nastiest, most mean-spirited person I know. Everything she is saying, regardless of if she believes it, is total horseshit.

Maybe it’s good. Maybe we need Rich Hammond and my Facebook “friend” to have this alternative reality – a place where you can be a social misfit, a big gangly half retarded freak, but accepted as the leader of the “insiders”. Maybe nasty ugly people need some outlet for whatever tiny good thing (expressed so freakishly) is in their soul. Maybe that way they don’t go postal on cool people like me!

HERE IS THE IDIOTS LATEST BLOG POST … the “INSIDER” bringing you up to the minute information about the Kings that only a jocksniffing athlete stalker could want:

Well, we made it. I have no idea if I’m supposed to be wide-awake or sleepy, hungry or full, and I only have a slight grasp on what day and time it is, but according to my computer it’s around 10:45 a.m. in Los Angeles, so good morning everyone.

The flight from Las Vegas to Hamburg was comfortable. A huge plane, with players getting first-class seating and the rest of the staff/travelers essentially getting an entire row to themselves. I’m not totally sure how long I slept — estimate would be somewhere in the range of four hours — but you couldn’t ask for anything better than what we had. “Breakfast” on the plane was served around 4 p.m. Germany time, so I’m not sure what to make of that, and the body clock will need a little adjustment.